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Designing all the things
First Round Capital’s +startup speaker series was recently featured in Pando Daily and I summarized the first Design+Startup talk from IDEO’s London based design director Tom Hulme on SneakerheadVC....
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Design + Startup
At First Round, we do lots of events focused on our Community of portfolio companies from speaker series to workshops to office hours. Every month our platform team helps hundreds of First Round...
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5 things that help craft products at Square
This is the fourth post in this series summarizing the Design+Startup event First Round put on with IDEO in San Francisco this summer. If you missed it, you should check out the talks from Tom Hulme,...
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Don’t waste your consumer’s attention. Take the time to Design EVERYTHING
I am a big believer in the power of design to build brand by injecting everything a company does with a little bit of flavor and creating one more touch point where a brand strikes a chord with the...
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3 questions every designer should ask before joining a start-up
It is a great time to be a designer. Big companies are recognizing your value and your scarcity and start-ups are investing in design. With all this attention starting to focus on the craft, you will...
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Is your company culture too strong to serve your customers?
Building a strong culture at a start up is a critical element to success. However, a couple recent news stories have me re-thinking the “stronger is better” conventional wisdom and wondering how you...
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Cultural Inflection – beware the effect of success
AND 1 started as a group of ball players on a mission to build the number one basketball company in the world. By 2000 we were on our way with close to 15% share of the basketball market and almost 5%...
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Features touch consumers. Strategies do not.
Product strategy and design direction get a lot of respect and features often get dismissed, but features actually touch customers. Features and the details of each one matter a ton because when your...
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Honor the assist and great culture will follow
Everyday, take the time to close the loop for the people you work with by saying thanks for a job well done. Honor the assist at your company and great culture will follow. I am not big on sports...
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Design+Startup: Robert Lenne, Head of Design at Art.sy
At Design+Startup, Robert Lenne, Head of Design at Art.sy and former Principal Designer at IDEO, explores how designers can maximise impact. Below you’ll find a summary - all the good stuff belongs to...
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Design+Startup: Alex Rainert, Head of Product at foursquare
In this Fireside chat at Design+Startup, Alex Rainert, Head of Product at foursquare, shares his design methodology and the story behind #allnew4sq - a complete redesign of the foursquare app. Below...
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Founders and Heat Seeking Missiles
As a seed-stage investor, First Round Capital typically funds powerpoints. Not only are the majority of our investments pre-revenue, but most of the time we are investing in pre-launch companies. While...
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Follow the leader?
Whenever First Round Capital holds a party, we sometimes get emails from a few of our guests asking if they can bring another person with them. Maybe a VC friend of ours wants to bring another partner...
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Board Transparency -- and the Implicit Web
I just read Fred Wilson's post about communicating bad news to investors. I completely agree that it is important for CEO's to avoid surprising their board and to communicate bad news just as fast as...
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Domino Rally Business Models
As a kid, I used to play with a game called Domino Rally -- where you would spend hours setting up an intricate course of hundreds of dominos, with the hope that you can create a spectacular "chain...
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I Don't Know...
I don't know. Why is it so hard for people (including both entrepreneurs and VCs) to say these three words? Click through to the First Round Capital Review to read more...
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How to "Ask for the Order"
I just read Fred Wilson's blog post about the need to ask for the order. I completely agree -- if you don't ask, you don't get. Click through to the First Round Capital Review to read more...
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Nothing to Lose (or Risk Tolerance is a Competitive Weapon)
I've been thinking a lot about the market/economy lately, and what the economic downturn means for startups. And I've come to the conclusion that while the economic crisis does present serious...
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Some thoughts on pricing...
I recently returned from a family vacation, and while I tried not to do much "work", I did find that a hotel can provide an interesting ecosystem to observe some interesting pricing dynamics. Click...
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"Catch And Release" Business Models
As the success of sites such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Classmates, and Geni have demonstrated, viral marketing can be a very effective tool to help build social networks that appeal to a wide...
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